BNL SPOTLIGHTS

NOTE TO EDITORS: "BNL Spotlights" is issued periodically
to bring you up to date on some of the latest newsworthy developments
at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.
For more information on any of these items, call Diane Greenberg
or Mona S. Rowe at BNL's Public Affairs Office at (516)344-2345.

IMPROVING THE SAFETY OF CHORNOBYL -- The worst nuclear
reactor accident in history -- the explosion of Russia's Chornobyl-4
-- released an estimated 50 million curies of radioactive material
into the environment on April 26, 1986. Nevertheless, Chornobyl-3,
a reactor housed in the same building as Chornobyl-4, is still
operating. The recent Nuclear Safety Summit has called for the
shutdown of the four reactors in the entire Chornobyl plant by
the year 2000.

Under a U.S. Department of Energy program, Brookhaven Lab is helping
to improve Chornobyl's safety and formulating plans to assure
that its decommissioning will be safe and efficient. Brookhaven
has provided Chornobyl with an analytic simulator -- a sophisticated
computer that enables reactor workers to simulate accidents for
training purposes. In addition, we have established training programs
for plant operators to improve their response under normal and
emergency conditions. The Laboratory is also serving as technical
lead for a joint U.S.-Russia decommissioning study for the Chernobyl-type
power plants still operating in Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine.

FORMULATING INFRASTRUCTURE POLICY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY --
The U.S. infrastructure -- its roads, bridges, water and sewer
systems, tunnels, railroads, airports, etc. -- is in need of an
extensive overhaul. To arrive at some decisions on how to best
tackle this problem in the present climate of very limited budgets,
about 160 experts involved in the construction and repair of infrastructure
systems are expected to attend an all-day colloquium on Monday,
June 3, at Columbia University. The colloquium is sponsored by
the New York Building Congress, Inc., and the National Infrastructure
Center for Engineering Systems and Technology Initiative, which
is a consortium founded at Brookhaven Lab.

The colloquium delegates will work toward a consensus on how new
technology options can lead to better and cheaper infrastructure
in the 21st century and how to attract additional infrastructure
projects to the New York region.

While the general public cannot attend the colloquium due to space
limitations, the media are invited. For more information, call
Professor F.H. Griffis at Columbia University, (212)854-8873.

USING INFRARED LIGHT TO EXAMINE HOW METALS BOND -- Using
the brightest broadband beam of infrared light in the world at
Brookhaven's National Synchrotron Light Source, research collaborators
from AT&T, Brookhaven Lab and Exxon are applying a technique
called surface vibrational spectroscopy to small atoms, such as
carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, to understand how the surfaces of
industrial metals bond. The new technique yields important data
on the strength and nature of the bonds. Such basic research may
lead to important clues on how to improve catalysts and control
corrosion.

RUSSIAN-BUILT MAGNETS FOR PHENIX DETECTOR -- The Relativistic
Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) will be Brookhaven Lab's largest particle
accelerator when it is completed in 1999. A crucial part of the
$500 million facility's construction will begin this spring when
two huge steel magnets made in Russia are installed in PHENIX,
one of RHIC's four detectors.

PHENIX, or Pioneering High Energy Nuclear Interaction Experiment,
is a 3,000-ton device about the size of a four-story house. It
will detect and analyze subatomic particles too small to be observed
directly. The particles are the result of collisions of large
atomic nuclei called heavy ions.

Over 400 scientists from 45 institutions in 10 countries will
be involved in the PHENIX experiment. The physicists hope to recreate
a form of matter called quark-gluon plasma, which has not existed
since moments after the Big Bang.